Fishing is an extremely popular sport. Commonly, fishing reels are used in combination with fishing rods in fishing with the reels playing out and retrieving line with a baited hook, lure or other fish catching device attached to the line. Conventional fishing reels have a spool that is rotated by a handle operated drive mechanism to retrieve the line. To allow line to play out from the spool, for example when a fisherman is playing a fish, a drag mechanism allows the spool to turn and play out line when a drag force applied to the spool by the drag mechanism is overcome. A typical drag mechanism can be adjusted to a free spool position in which little or no drag is supplied to the spool so that the spool can freely spin, such as when a user is casting.
Although many types of reels are known, there is nevertheless a need for improvements to fishing reels.